Cyr column: The G20 is low profile but powerful in health efforts

Arthur I. Cyr More Content Now

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Apr 28, 2020 at 12:28 PMApr 28, 2020 at 12:28 PM

Columns share an author’s personal perspective.*****

On the world stage, as on other stages, flamboyant posturing gets attention, and can mask and distract from important work done elsewhere. At the end of March, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres proclaimed that the COVID-19 pandemic is the greatest threat to the planet since World War II. Guterres is a politician who served as prime minister of Portugal.

That claim might be a slight exaggeration. The decades following that war included the Cold War with periodic confrontations between the nuclear-armed superpowers, wars that could have escalated, and international virus pandemics in 1957-58 and 1968.

Meanwhile, on April 21, Qu Dongyu, the President of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), told agriculture ministers of the G20 (Group of 20) protecting world food supplies from contamination is a high priority. The G20 comprises nations with sizable economies, plus the European Union. His serious speech did not draw much media.

Qu is the first FAO leader from China. The current virus threat originated in China, and that nation must also be part of the solution. He was speaking on behalf of his FAO as well as the World Food Program, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

All three are part of the UN. Their undramatic work is vital. Today, G20 actions have major impacts around the globe.

National finance ministries manage international policy machinery, which has proven to be remarkably effective. This system has promoted both economic growth and political stability.

Last June, G20 finance ministers met in Japan. The international organization was established in 1999, spurred by the Asia financial crisis of 1997. During that dangerous development, the collapse of the Thai currency spread like a financial gasoline fire throughout the enormous Pacific region.

Rapid response by policy leaders, led by the United States, mobilized public and private liquid capital to relieve nearly disastrous financial pressures on the Asia economies. U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin deserve credit for working effectively with President Bill Clinton to stabilize that earlier crisis.

In 2010, G20 meetings took place in Gyeongju and then Seoul, South Korea. The selection of this nation aptly, and appropriately, symbolized the exceptional economic development of their powerhouse economy - and stable functional democracy - during the years following the devastating Korean War of 1950 to 1953.

Japan was a participant in the initial, predecessor G7 organization of economically advanced nations. The successor G20 has provided a wider arena to include China, along with Brazil, India and other rapidly industrializing large economies of the world.

The fact that worldwide very poor people are becoming prosperous is good news for everyone. They represent new competitors, but also potential new consumers of our products.

President Barack Obama shrewdly picked Pittsburgh as the site for the fall 2009 G20 summit. In the 1980s, that city symbolized economic decline, as domestic steel manufacturing faded and unemployment approached 20%. Sustained high-tech investment transformed the city.

At the 2009 summit, Bill Gates of Microsoft dedicated a new computer science complex at Carnegie-Mellon University. Apple, Disney, Google and Intel are some of the other major investors in the city. The U.S. remains dominant among the global high-technology companies.

We learned through terrible 20th century experiences that economic protectionism is ultimately self-defeating, nationalism is dangerous, and market economic competition works well.

The G20 provides a way to promote various kinds of public health.Arthur I. Cyr is Clausen Distinguished Professor at Carthage College and author of “After the Cold War” (NYU Press and Macmillan). Contact acyr@carthage.edu.

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